


Stewardship

by azurefishnets



Category: Mutazione
Genre: Gen, Slice of Life, musings on responsibility vs. blame vs. fault
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-24
Updated: 2020-08-24
Packaged: 2021-03-06 16:21:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,943
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26091805
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/azurefishnets/pseuds/azurefishnets
Summary: There's a role for everyone in the community, and Miu has long embraced hers..but in the wake of the great changes in Mutazione following Kai's visit, Miu finds herself too-often- conflicted.
Relationships: Miu & Nonno, Miu & Yoké
Comments: 1
Kudos: 7
Collections: Press Start VI





	Stewardship

**Author's Note:**

  * For [hecleretical](https://archiveofourown.org/users/hecleretical/gifts).



> Prompt: Miu & Yoké: two great tastes that taste great together! their relationship and the trauma they share, learning to find hope and solace in each other, their complicated feelings towards Nonno, etc.

The buck raised its head and sniffed, body tensed and antlers swiveling as it tested the wind, eyes wide and liquid-dark as they reflected the world of fear that was the life of prey ever on the alert for its own demise. Hidden as she was in the branches above and testing the wind herself constantly with her whiskers, Miu knew that she could bring death on the deer as she pleased, the life of a predator ever on the alert for her next meal. She looked and calculated, minute shifts in her claws and tail keeping her aloft on the spindly branches. The antlers could prove a problem if she dropped wrong—she could be gored or trampled if she made the smallest mistake from this angle. Do it quick, one drop, one slash, and get it home to clean and have Spike cook for this week’s barbecue. The procedure hadn’t changed; the prey hadn’t changed. The predator in her hadn’t changed. It was only Miu, herself, that was still conflicted, though she told herself this conflict had no place in the hunt.

The deer swung its head up, alerted by some sound or a sense only it knew, and their eyes met and held for a long instant before it wheeled and began to leap away. Cursing, Miu dropped without further regard for the potential danger, and ended it, not without taking a long, shallow slash in her arm from a splintered antler, broken in some long-ago battle.

“Damn it, damn it, _damn_ it,” she hissed, and clamped her hand down to stanch the wound. After a moment, she took it away; the blood still flowed in a slow trickle, but she needed to get the deer and herself home before the bigger predators of the dark decided to come get a taste. Looking around, she grabbed some broad-leafed plant and a bit of vine to tie into a bandage. She was no Nonno or Kai—she shuddered at the thought—but she remembered a few things about the local plants and this one wouldn’t make her bleed more, anyway.

Taking a deep breath, she hoisted the deer up and onto her back and trudged out through the wild places that lay far beyond the world most of those in Mutazione knew. As she walked, her arm throbbed in time to her thoughts. She’d nearly lost this deer. Her, Miu, the island’s hunter and protector. She was acting like some mewling child—she flinched, nearly dropping the deer, and swallowed hard. That wasn’t a comparison she felt much like exploring, or replaying.

She continued past the temple, the lights already lit and warming the evening gloom. As always, she admired the blackpool lilies there, but kept her eyes down, not wanting to look at the larger garden beyond. In her memory, it was someone else who stood there anyway, smiling at her over the water as she brought home dinner—

Her arm throbbed again, and she realized a little dizzily there was liquid trickling from under the leaf. That cut must have been deeper than she’d thought, or there was something on that antler that was keeping her bleeding. Where the close weight of the deer lay upon her shoulders, she burned. She burned everywhere. She shook her head, hard ears lying flat to her skull. Just a little further and she was home. She could make dinner for…no. No, there was no one in that tiny, empty room to make food for…but what of her old home, the one she burned for? What would she find if she went there now, in this magical, lightheaded twilight where only she walked?

She stumbled on, half dragging the deer now as the night deepened, and sighed with relief to see her own garden coming into sight. Home, surely, and rest, would make a world of difference. Home, and she could put it all down and be safe from the monsters. Home. The babies were so quiet, but the garden sang a cooling, ghostly melody as she dragged the deer into the old foundations and laid herself under the rain willow. As she sank into the dark she remembered to feel distant alarm—this wasn’t right!— but the evening was upon her now and it had her in its claws.

* * *

She sat up with a start in the light of very early dawn, eyes wide and dilated as she fought to consciousness. Nonno jumped back from a swipe of her claws, hands out as he tried to calm her.

“Where is he?” She demanded, wrestling with the covers so she could leap up, be ready for the attack.

“Yoké? He’s—”

“No! RD, he’s…he’s…oh.”

She sat with a thump, dust rising around her from Yoke’s old armchair. She’d managed to avoid the archives, with its the smell of dust and books and old-man-who-smelled-too-much-like-his-son, for so many years now, but her she was with the scent nearly unbearable to her sensitive nose. She wanted to breathe it in, or try very hard not to breathe at all. She settled for shallow breaths, and looked up at Nonno.

“I guess I was dreaming.”

He nodded. “You said their names in your sleep several times.”

“Oh…” the fever still burned probably, surely the reason the easy tears came to her eyes and stung her nose. “I thought. Well.” She cleared her throat. “What happened?”

“I suspect you could tell me better, but I found you in your garden last night with a freshly-killed deer carcass,” he said, his voice straining for lightness. “You were all tucked under the rain willow, and you had a nice cut on your arm and a quite impressive fever.” He picked up the leaves on the desk next to him and waved them at her. “The sap of these trees induces hallucinations when it gets into your bloodstream. Good antibiotic though, when you grind it up and steep it. The fever broke soon after we got you in here, and you’ve been sleeping since then.”

“Ugh.” Miu shuddered. “I’ll remember that one from now on. Got caught by a deer when I was…distracted.”

He looked her over with a physician’s eye, gauging for further injury. “Glad I happened along then. Ailin’s due any day, and I was needing some things from your garden. Fan amanita, some—”

“Stop.” Miu said sharply. “I’m not Kai or—anyway. I don’t care what those plants do as long as they do their job and I do mine. You don’t need to explain.”

He stopped, his face going stiff. “Of course. Forgive me.”

“Not yet.” Miu blinked, and slumped in the chair with her head in her hands. “Sorry, that was uncalled for, I guess. I did, I thought. I mean, when we talked before, about…them. But… things are kind of close to the surface at the moment and I can’t really…talk about plants. Or babies. Right now.”

He nodded again. “You have that right.” He paused for a moment, nerving himself to say something, but the words didn’t come. There was a long silence.

“What.” Miu finally prompted, her voice rough.

“When I was in the dark. With Kai,” Nonno said, his words careful, “I asked her how to face you, and Yoké. How to make amends.”

“And she told you it wasn’t your fault,” Miu said. “We talked, she and I, before she went back home.”

“Well, yes, not exactly, but—”

Nonno was interrupted by a call from outside. Both peered out of the window to see Tung, panting, with his hands on his knees.

“Nonno!” he bellowed, straightening and cupping his hands to his mouth. “Are you here? Ailin needs you!”

“Excuse me, Miu,” Nonno said. “I need to find out what’s wrong. May we talk more later?”

“Whatever.” Miu got to her feet. “I feel better anyway. Gonna head home.” She looked vaguely around. “What happened to the deer?”

“Mm. Spike came and got it. He said he and Bopek would learn how to clean it together. He was very worried about you, you know.”

Miu’s eyes widened. “Oh god. They’ll ruin it. I have to go.”

“I’d really rather you stayed here a little longer, but I won’t force you. Go and get some rest today? We can get by for a while.”

Miu’s eyes shuttered. “Eh. Yeah, maybe.”

“Good.”

“Nonno, hurry!”

Tung’s yell made Nonno jump, and the old shaman waved out the window at him. “Coming, I’m coming.”

He hurried down the stairs, and Miu followed a few minutes later, looking down at her arm. It was wrapped in a bandage made of tightly woven rain willow leaves, over a salve that smelled of the acerbic, sharp scent of desert star oil Nonno used to salve wounds. It didn’t hurt anymore, exactly, but it didn’t feel as if nothing was under that bandage either. It was an odd, almost numb feeling, but not quite numb enough. She shrugged. It would be better soon, probably.

She made her way past her garden, avoiding the sight of the foundations of her old home, and up the stairs to the main area of the town. It was empty except for the Sausages, who were, as usual, planning their next get-rich-quick scheme, this one featuring something about dirty diapers.

Yoké wasn’t outside, unusually for an early morning. She cast a look up the stairs toward her home; she could go and listen to something loud and dark and allow herself to drift for a while. Nonno likely wouldn’t be home for some time. Or, failing that, she could go check on Spike and Bopek, but, despite what she’d said to Nonno, she couldn’t care much less about the disposition of the deer after the embarrassing situation it had put her in, and she wasn’t up for Spike fussing at her.

On the other hand. Was Yoké all right? It really wasn’t like him not to be outside waiting for someone to take him to the archives. It wasn’t that she was avoiding him, exactly. It’s just…they had had an understanding between them, almost, in the long slow twilight of Nonno’s dying. Protect the community, he by knowledge, she by strength. Stay away from each other, for fear of mutual wound, but do nothing to harm the community more than they already had.

She found her steps turning and she stopped on the porch. Before she could hesitate even more, she knocked on the door, and entered at the muffled summons to enter.

Yoké sat in his front room, turning something round and round in his hands. He looked up without surprise.

“Hello, dear girl.”

“Hey. You, um… you OK?”

“Oh, yes, of course. I had begun to make my early preparations, but as you may already know, it seems Claire is needed elsewhere.”

“Yeah. I suppose I should go help.” Miu made no move toward the door. “I have experience with that stuff after all.”

“My dear, I do not say this with unkind intent, but I doubt anyone would fault you were you to avoid that particular burden.”

“Yeah. You’re probably right.” Miu leaned against the door. “What have you got there?”

“Something Nonno found in the garden and thought I might want.” Yoké sighed. “He continues to try, in his own inimitable fashion, to make some kind of amends.”

“Yeah, we were kind of talking about that. Kai told him it wasn’t his fault.” Miu didn’t hide the bitterness.

“And so it was not, and I can see that now.” Yoké sighed. “He and RD… acted without commensurate knowledge for them to be leaders they sought to be, but they had good intentions. I can understand your conflicted feelings, dear girl, and I share them, but I believe what Kai was trying to teach us, in her precipitate flight to the Fung, that it is not fault, nor blame, that needs apportioning.”

“Then…what is?”

Yoké chuckled. “Leadership, I suppose. Nonno is physically more well, but his long illness put the spotlight on how much this community relied on Manii, and then him, to provide a moral center for our island, when it should always have been the job of everyone to take care of our own. He tried to play the savior, but that never should have been necessary. Now Mori, Nonno and I are old, like Manii before us. We shall be gone soon enough and then it will be the job of your generation to be the stewards of the Papu, the Fung…and those that come after you.”

“But I already failed at saving them,” Miu said. “I don’t… I don’t want that responsibility again.”

“Dear girl, you have already taken on that responsibility in other ways. Kai told Nonno, and he told me where she found you when she…returned from the Fung.”

“Yeah. Well, I couldn’t let—” Miu’s throat closed, and she gestured inarticulately.

“Hm?” Yoké gazed at her, puzzled.

“I couldn’t let her, um, hurt you. If she’d come out like…him.” Miu swallowed. “Your house is just up the path from Jell-A’s cave. She could have…”

“She _could_ have.” Yoké took off his glasses, the nearly sightless eyes behind them dim with cataracts, and rubbed his forehead. “But you would have stopped her, dear girl.”

“Because I had to!” Miu got up and paced, tail twitching. “You’re the only… I won’t have anything left of them when you… if you had... I mean. I was protecting the island, but my first thought was to make sure she wouldn’t hurt you.” She shook her head hard, ears rattling. “I know you’re right. I protect and feed everyone here. That’s my role and I don’t mind it. But I can’t... there will never be…another RD for me. Or…you know.”

“Oh, my dear Miu. That sort of stewardship is others’ burden to bear now, if you choose not to. Again, no one here would fault you for that choice.”

“Maybe _I_ would.”

“That is your decision and your life to live, my dear, but know that I only wish you the best and happiest life you can have in future, wherever I am in it. I hope you shall not avoid love or hope for fear of repeating the past or what I would think. I think RD, as he was before, would want you to be able to move on. Learn from him… and Nonno, if you cannot be friends with him—living in the past and focusing only on who is to blame helps neither yourself nor the community whom you are protecting.”

Miu nodded, thinking of the deer and the lesson in being present it had carved into her flesh. “Yeah.”

Yoké offered her the thing he’d been toying with. It was a rattle, made of dried seeds in a small, bumpily-carved wooden container.

“RD made that,” Miu said. “I thought it had burned with the house.” She plucked it from Yoke’s upturned palm and rattled it. It still sounded as clear as the day he’d made it for her eldest.

“As I said, Nonno found it in the garden; it was unearthed, I suppose, when one of the plants sprouted underneath it. He thought I might want it for the archives, or for a personal memento. But you may have it instead, my dear, if you like.”

Miu thought for a moment, and in the silence, they both heard the baby’s wail clearly in the still morning air. Ailin’s child had made its appearance, it seemed.

“A new member of the community!” Yoké said, delighted. “A little early, perhaps, but what a healthy cry for all that.” Tears brimmed in his rheumy eyes. “Ah. Forgive me, my dear. The tears come easier nowadays. I do miss them too, you know. And I’ve missed you, as well.”

Miu looked down at the rattle. The past was there and it still hurt; the shadows RD had left her would never leave. However… her arm didn’t hurt anymore. Nonno had bandaged and salved it. The cut was still there, but he’d done his best to make it better. She could take this opportunity to pass that forward.

“Hey, would you want me to take you to the archives?” she said, seized with a new impulse. “We can stop by the bathhouse on the way.”

“I would be delighted for your company,” Yoké agreed, smiling. “You sound as though you have a plan.”

“Yeah, well, not really. But…it would be nice to know that this could still be used. You know. A little of who RD and I were, going forward into the community. Stewardship, I guess? In a way. So, um, if it’s OK with you, instead of putting it in the archives or hiding it away at my house, I thought maybe…Ailin and the kiddo might like it.”

“And so we truly begin anew.” Yoké patted her hand. “This thoughtfulness of yours, dear girl, is a protection for the community too. I’m proud to have you seeing our home into the next generation as one of its protectors.” He put his glasses back on. “Let us go meet this new young denizen of our island then, together.”

From Yoké’s house into the hazy brightness of the morning they went, the sunlight as warm as a caress on their fur. The Papu’s flowers drifted silently around them as the rest of their friends and family were coming to the bathhouse, ready to welcome the future, a community reborn and bound together through love that refused to be burned away or turned into the dark.

**Author's Note:**

> Hey hecleretical! Happy Press Start and I hope this scratches the needing-more-of-Mutazione itch, at least in some small way!


End file.
